For many years, the U.S. government has provided fastener quality guidelines for various industries. Recent audits of adherence to these guidelines have highlighted areas for improvement in fastener quality in certain fields. For example, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) document number AS9100 presents quality guidelines for screws, bolts, and other fasteners for the commercial aviation industry.
Screw and bolt quality is currently measured with gauges. Current gauges, such as those produced by Greenslade, Southern, and Johnson, for measuring screw and bolt quality, such as thread features, are unable to meet measurement uncertainty limits set forth in AS9100. Further, these gauges do not provide traceability of the information they gather with respect to the fastener.
Therefore, there exists an unmet need for gauges that meet measurement uncertainty limits.